Arminius writes "It looks like Sharp has finally released the Linux based Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 for retail sale. This thing is so awesome! Other than only being able to listen to mp3's thru my headphones only, this thing blows away my iPaq 3835! It even has Opera as the web browser. "

scrm writes: "Nokia just released a slew of new phones at CEBIT. Among them are two phones - a full-color phone and a cheap n' cheerful model - both of whose software can be upgraded with Java applications." And Haggis writes "Nokia are to use the Opera browser in the latest incarnation of their everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink mobile phone, the 9210i. Oh, and it will run Java applets too."

Rob Valliere writes: "The best Linux Web browsers have dramatically improved in the past few months: they are all stable, standards compliant and loaded with solid feature enhancements and additions. Using Red Hat 7.2 and the KDE desktop, the premier Linux browsers are Galeon 1.0.3, Mozilla 0.9.8 and Opera 6.0 TP3. The best Web downloads and installs were from Opera and Mozilla, which have minimal dependencies. Galeon is a small download but can be difficult to upgrade due to its Mozilla and GNOME dependencies."

Lois McMaster Bujold is known for her series of space opera novels about Miles Vorkosigan, a crippled but intelligent protagonist who has been, variously, a military officer, a secret agent, commander of a mercenary fleet, diplomat... the list goes on. The Curse of Chalion is, as far as I know, her first fantasy novel. [A reader points out that it isn't.] The crippled but intelligent protagonist is a military officer who gets employed as a diplomat, secret agent, secretary... you get the idea. A fun read, the plot isn't perfect but it's still a cut above most fantasy novels these days. At the very least, it isn't a rehash of the "small company has to get [item] to destroy [dark lord]" plot.

JT Martin writes with his review of Barrington Bayley's The Knights of the Limits. Fans of obscure science fiction should thank JT for the service thus rendered.

Kent M. Pitman has been programming in Scheme and Lisp, and contributing to the design of those languages, for a long time -- 24 years. He was a technical contributor and an international representative for the ANSI subcommittee that standardized Common Lisp, and in that capacity directed the design of Lisp's error system. Scheme may be better known as a teaching language, but both Scheme and Lisp have applications (as any Emacs user knows) that go far beyond this. Now's your chance to ask him about the pros and cons of those two languages, circa 2001 A.D. Kent also has an interesting, ambivalent take on Free software that's worth noting in an atmosphere where complex issues are often oversimplified and radicalized. Since he's someone who's helped develop standards, this is perhaps a timely issue on which to probe his opinion. It's also a good time to get acquainted with things he's written, which might interest you just as much as his programming. (Soap opera parodies, anyone?) So suggest questions for Kent below (please, one per post) -- we'll pass along the highest-rated ones for him to answer, and Kent will get back soon with his answers.

Bill Kendrick writes: "ZDNet reports that Sharp is getting ready to make its Linux-based PDA available to developers in the next few weeks. They'll include a 206MHz StrongARM, 32MB (in the cheaper, developer edition), a JVM, the Opera web browser, and a slide-out keyboard. A profile of the device is available at LinuxDevices.com." We've mentioned this before, but it looks like it'll be here soon.

Jedbro writes: "I have really enjoyed the mouse gestures in Opera since its release, since then I have come across an awesome new project at Mozdev, called OptiMoz. OptiMoz (a.k.a. MozGest) is a XPI for Mozilla allowing Mouse Gestures to be available. It works great with Mozilla 0.9.4 and nightly builds. It currently has Gestures for: *New Tab Window (Moz Tabs!!) *Forward in History *Backward in History *Reload *New Document *Up a directory in the URL *View Source *View Cookies for Current Domain *View Meta Data for Domain and *Access Homepage."

Anderson Silva writes "LinuxToday has an article doing a pretty basic comparison on some of the major linux browsers. Although a nice article, and with a fair result, I still think Opera is the best browser available for Linux." I prefer knoqueror, although recent builds seem to have random hangs on images.google.com.

theComposer asks: "I use Opera as my browser of choice. Ever since Microsoft changed it's Hotmail interface, I've been having "issues". If I set Opera to identify itself as Opera, Hotmail won't let me look at my mail. I get a screen that tells me to upgrade to the lastest Internet Explorer or Netscape. However, if I set Opera to identify itself as IE, I can log in just fine. Once in (with Opera), I can't check an email and delete it or move to another folder or whatnot. I had no problems using Opera with Hotmail before the interface change. It goes without saying that everything works fine in IE. Does anyone else have these problems or am I doing something wrong here?" It goes without saying that this kind of behavior is expected from Microsoft, nevertheless, has anyone gotten Opera to work with Hotmail? If so, what tricks need to be performed? If anyone else is having problems with a non-IE browser when accessing Hotmail, please share your experiences.

fm6 writes "The MIT Technology Review has done a status report on Internet2, the bandwidth-intensive sequel to the Internet. What's really exciting is the way people are already using this technology: virtual nanomanipulation, online surgical procedures, even telepresence opera. Lots of interesting links."

It's Review Day at Slashdot! Chris DiBona has spent a lot of time staring at Kevin Sorbo's manly pecs, and he has graced us with this review of the (relatively) new TV series Andromeda.

Musical styles evolve like biological species evolve, in response to their environment. Musical ideas flourish -- or die off -- depending on how well their human creators are rewarded. A big factor in the evolution of musical style is us, the listeners; the next sound is cool, some old sounds are lame, Artist X now gets our dollars while Artist Y goes back to working as a waitress. Style marches on. But dollars just help steer the evolution of the machine. It's technology that decides where it can go. And to understand what influence our music technology can have, it helps to know what influences it has had. (Part two of three; here's yesterday's part one if you missed it.)

Linus Torvalds (and David Diamond) wrote this book; chromatic wrote the review below. It may be hard to say much new about Linus and the results of his 1991 inspiration to loose his kernel on the world, but this book is historically informative, with copyrighted Torvalds humor to boot (I snorted in parts) and fun facts about growing up in Finland. And for a multimedia extravaganza, you can even listen to some conversation between Linus and co-author David Diamond.

_iris writes: "As reported on the Dot, gesture control (apparently all the rage with the kids after the latest Opera release) is coming to KDE. You can find a _very_ early release of KGesture here." Sounds like a recipe for carpal tunnel to me.

jotaeleemeese writes: "A few days ago there was a discussion about gesture navigation in the Opera browser, that prompted my to buy Black & White, download Opera and get the evaluation version of Sensiva. Being a trackball user, I found gesture navigation too cubersome, I found a mouse not much better either. Then I thought a pen based device or a touchpad could be ideal for this kind of input, but before investing my hard cash buying something, I would like opinions from /.ers that have already tried something with these or other programs using gesture recognition and what the results have been."

Trepidity writes "The Opera web browser appears to be the first to add gesture-based navigation (made popular recently in the game Black&White) as a standard feature. You can perform a bunch of common actions with simple gestures, such as holding down the right mouse button moving left and releasing to go back, or moving up then down while holding the button to reload the current page. A list of the various implemented commands can be found on their site." I've been playing a fair amount of B&W lately - the interface took a bit to learn, but once you['ve got it done, it's actually a very efficent system of getting around - the use within the Web might finally take the Web beyond just a point and click interface. Maybe. Probably not. CT: Just don't try it with a thinkpad style nipple mouse. My wrist lost feeling. Update: 04/18 02:55 PM by T : Read more below for a software project that promises to spread some gestural goodness even further.

ScottBob asks: "Recently, there was a story on the local news about a community outreach center that was broken into and vandalized, and among other things, several donated computers were stolen. After the story aired, several more computers were donated by local businesses. A followup story showed the sympathetic business owners removing unused computers from closets, etc. to donate to the center. This leads me to believe that the computers the center originally had were also old computers that were donated because they were taking up space and gathering dust after being replaced with newer, updated computers. But that's where the problem lies: Since they are usually given away due to obsolescence, how is the community outreach center, elementary school, or other charity supposed to maintain them? They won't run today's software, which usually means having to track down legacy software of its era, possibly making illegal copies whenever legitimate copies are too scarce, making the school or charity guilty of crime under current laws." Scott makes an interesting point, however I'm not so sure that much can be done about this situation. Computer hardware and software becomes obsolete so quickly in this market (and it's happening faster by the day, too). Couple that fact with the latest trends in software laws and licensing and you discover that keeping an old machine viable is getting more difficult by the day, and this will get worse as time goes on.

ContinuousPark asks: "My local college has asked me to participate in a 120 hour course on multimedia production. I proposed that one of the modules should be called something like 'Multimedia Appreciation'; I will be teaching this one. During this 10 to 20 hour period, I intend to show students several examples of multimedia productions so they can get an idea of what's possible; what's has been done; and what's original or too common, so they can formulate their own projects, later. So I'm looking for interesting websites that could inspire students, that could help them understand what is a good multimedia production, what kind of effort goes into it, etc. In fact, I'm not just looking for websites, I would also like to include videogames, movies, opera productions, and any other work of art that uses multiple channels to convey a message. What are the most effective multimedia productions you've seen through the years? Examples easily available so that I can show it to them are of course preferable, I'm willing to buy any CD, DVD, book or whatever though. Thanks for the advice."

Jón Ragnarsson asks: "I'm loosing my mind over my bookmarks. I use 3 computers on a daily basis, and not even one of them is mobile. I have about 10 instances of browsers on them, each and every one with it's own bookmark system. I have countless times cursed when I'm at home but need some obscure bookmark on my computer at work, and just can't remember the url or phrases to find it in Google. So last night I went on a mission: I decided to think up a standard to store and retreive bookmarks. But first I deceided to search the Net just in case if somebody else had done the same thing. I typed 'bookmark protocol' in Google and behold, the fourth link mentioned the ACAP - Application Configuration Access Protocol, defined in rfc2244. So, why isn't it used?"